McMahon touched off in 50m breaststroke final

SWIMMING:SYCERIKA McMAHON won a silver medal on the final day of competition at the European Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, yesterday.

The Portaferry teenager completed the 50 metre breaststroke final in a time of 31.27 seconds – just missing out on gold by two-hundreths of a second. The race was won by the Cezch Republic’s Petra Chocova in 31.25.

The 17-year-old set a new Irish senior record in the process, the previous record of 31.49 – held by McMahon – set at last year’s World Swimming Championships.

McMahon secured Olympic qualification last Tuesday in the 100m breaststroke final where she finished fifth.

“It’s been a great week for Irish swimming, two FINA A standards earlier in the week and then to top it off Sycerika’s great performance for the Silver medal today, the team have had a great championship overall,” said Peter Banks, Swim Ireland’s High Performance director.

Also in action were the women’s 4x100m medley relay team. McMahon, along with Melanie Nocher, Bethany Carson and Fiona Doyle, swam the heats yesterday morning where they finished 12th overall in a time of 4:13.75.

Also at Debrecen, Laszlo Cseh claimed a fifth successive 400m individual medley title as he won his third gold of the week.

The Hungarian had already won the 200m medley and 200m butterfly, as well as finishing second in the 100m butterfly in a new national record on Saturday night behind Olympic silver medallist Milorad Cavic, who shot to the top of the world rankings and an enticing rematch with Michael Phelps in London this summer.